Runner's Heights: The Anatomy of Cool

Cumulative mileage: 46 miles

Despite the air-quality reports, I ventured out into the Ballona Creek this evening with the feeling that the ocean breeze would mitigate some of the haze and smoke in the air. I might have been partially right but the stench of the stagnant water in the creek and the mild breeze almost proved me wrong. The sun skies however were a different story -- hues of violet, orange, cadmium red and burnt sienna. The drama was in the skies with the orange ball of a sun hiding behind the iridescent curtains of the clouds and smoke. The NASA satellite images of the Southern California wildfires demonstrated the immense swathe that the fires have drawn for hundreds of miles. The Santa Ana winds, being very low in humidity, dry you up as you run and you perspire very little until you have notched up a few miles. All the reason to stay hydrated because your skin is cooling you less efficiently without the perspiration. Since I was reading the weather reports, I was prepared for this and drank a lot of water throughout the day. So, this is how I might have been able to stave off any cramping.

It is always interesting to see salespeople at a store pitching items based on their form and less on their function, i.e., harping more than the "cool" factor than its utilitarian value. Now, I am not talking about the fashion aisle in Nordstrom but a bike store. This was Wheel World in Culver City and we were looking into clipless pedals. A customer asked why he needed clipless pedals and the salesperson answered that it was because he thought they looked "cool." Noting the disbelief in our faces, he did explain that clipless pedals help with the upstroke assist during pedaling but then proceeded to show us clipless pedals that were $109 a pair! The customer had brought in a used bike that was worth less than $200 but this sales person was recommended pedals that were more than half the worth of the bike. The interesting part is that the salesperson hadn't bothered to look at the bike at all to begin with. While flaunting off the $109- a-pair Shimano pedals he was waxing rhapsodic about the coolness factor of the shiny, nickel-plated pedals.

You would think that bike stores, surfboard shops, and music stores were the last bastion of stores where the sales people actually were passionate about the trade and made intelligent suggestions to customers based on experience and value. But, alas, this is a waning phenomenon. It was the same bike store that another salesperson convinced me to buy a Knog Frog LED light over a CatEye light. On hindsight, I should have bought the CatEye light because it had greater illumination power despite the fact that it takes several AAA batteries to produce that illumination. But I am convinced that the salesperson sold the Knog Frog because it was more cool than the staid CatEye product.

As Aerosmith would say, "Live and learn from fools and from sages..."